With your permission, Ms. Blais, I'm going to interrupt.
Mr. Chair, I'm thinking of another discharge that occurred near my home in the Quebec City region this past summer. On August 25, Radio-Canada reported that 760 million litres of waste-water had been discharged into the river in the second week of July. That had nothing to do with the discharge authorization that was issued in Montreal, even though it clearly had a very significant impact.
At the time of that discharge, André Bélanger, a citizen involved with Fondation Rivières, said it was a major incident. In addition, Satinder Kaur Brar, an environmental biotechnology and decontamination expert from York University, in Toronto, said that the discharge would have deleterious effects on the river for years to come.
Why does the government authorize things that can have harmful effects on the river in the future?